The Blissful Moment of Creativity:

It is somewhat surprising that I haven't posted since the beginning of August 08 and this is one of the most creative and productive periods of my life for art/creativity as I'm making a significant transformation that has been a long time in coming.
Personally, it has been a delightful, and transformative experience. My sense of who I am is altered. Who am I? Poet? Artist? Installation Artist? Playwright? I’ve set aside all other business activities for the near term to focus on this process of emergence. The creative flood is unsettling, nevertheless, I am in the “river” of this flow and learning to relax, enjoy the ride, and sail with the current. The shores look appealing with their certainty, but as I am letting go of my expectations, the voyage is taking my in places I never knew existed.
For the past few months, I've been drawing and designing on average of a few hours a day, some days more than 4 hours. In terms of the fine artistry skills, Michelangelo should rest comfortably in his grave that he doesn't have to rise up and challenge me. I'm more than a bit mystified as to this direction of these large installation/ multimedia projects. For years, I've often been fascinated by modern installation art, and have often been more dismissive than admiring of it ie., a stack of Fluorescent light bulbs as one of the prize finalists for the Venice biennale; a chunk of oak on the floor of the MOMA; an iron bed with a strand of barbed wire hanging from the wall of the Barcelona Modern; the Madonna painted with Elephant shit, etc. and the list of specious projects goes on. Perhaps my plebian roots are showing?
However, in the midst of a plethora of art projects that are complete bullshit, I take my own foolish plunge into that world. I am very inspired, emboldened by so many artists, who are willing to put their fools cap on and dance a merry jig.
The core of my strength is when I can fuse my vision as a poet/ artist and social change activist. I was very inspired by Shepard Fairey’s show in Boston and how this artist very successfully blended his social political vision and his art.

The greatest gift to give yourself is the gift of time. The permission to create, to sit quietly, play guitar, take off in the middle of the day to play tennis, to lie back in a pile of leaves and watch autumn unfold, or a myriad of idle pleasures. Creativity happens in these unstructured moments, I’ve wasted too much of my life being busy and trying to make money. Now with 55 approaching in a few weeks, I am totally at peace by Blue Heron Pond, and cherish the time to write and create.

Also in the past few months, I’ve had the pleasure with working and exchanging ideas with the terrific jazz pianist Chris Bakriges. Chris and I are performing in NYC and planning on some tentative long-range projects. Also, Naomi Bennett, the director worked with me on a local 24-hour play festival that was a lot of fun. It was adventures on the planet Ku-Landia where "Kus monaughts" travel through the Universe powered by a collective orgiastic moan. It is a wee bit faster than Domino’s Delivery and twice as delicious. Naomi is also working on creating “On the Island of Binga Bonga” as a children’s play.
In preparing and thinking about the project “4 Prophets” I’ve been devouring books on Islam and Modernity, the Koran, the Bible, and pushing myself on this question: What is more pernicious: The religion? The Holy Books? Humanity?

New Projects in the works:

30 October 2009 8 PM: 5 C Café in NYC on Avenue C by Tompkins Square Park with Chris Bakriges, Ken Foliano, and myself. We will record the event and the following day spend time recording in Brooklyn. The show is Jaz Mu Experience.

On the Island of Binga Bonga: I’ve had the delight of working with Naomi Bennett on the children’s book that I have on line at www.vermontpoet.com. and she is translating that into a children’s play with her students in Boston.

Spring 2009: Jaz Mu Experience: ir Reveren’ jAz: Naomi is directing and designing a troupe of about 6 actors/ dancers to perform 5 new multimedia pieces: Schizophrenetica/ Jhesus Vivaldi; Love in a Minor Key of Ku; Colors of Imagination: Jazz is a Conversation.

Haiti: In the initial steps of working with a group called RE-THINK HAITI a community development project there

In my new creative projects I found some creative mojo:

Four Prophets: I’ve detailed this before of Mohammed (mo mo), Moses (Moishe), and Jesus (J-Man) and Satan as a blues singer meet in a public restroom to discuss the arc of faith, religion, spiritually, and the fate of Man.

Be All that You Can Be: The project of some 450 – plus marching through the streets of Washington to represent the some 4,800 US lives lost in the insanity known as Iraq Afghanistan: The 5th Crusade.

Land Mine: A 15 by 15 meter barbed wire area in a public space with sand. In it are buried de-activated landmines. The landmine area is barbed wired with pictures of children maimed and killed by landmines.

Rape the Bitch: Sexual Slavery in the 21st Century

Installation/ Multimedia/ Performance Project
There are according to some estimates a million to ten million women, girls, and boys trafficked annually for sex and slavery. Bought and sold like cattle for sex.
The project is the creation of a brothel in a public space/ museum. It will be roughly 25 meters by 25 meters depending on the space. It has the lairs and labyrinth
of a brothel, where you have live models of young men and women lying on small beds in tiny cubicles. Some are chained to the bed and others not. There are also clients in the room with the young men and women. The smells of cheap perfume, sex, unwashed bodies will permeate the rooms.
Clients, viewers are invited to walk through the rooms. Observe the prostitutes and customers. Some of the women will invite the customers back to the room and draw them into the lair.
Outside Structure: the structure looks like a stage set but at the entrance it looks like one of the main thoroughfares for the red light district of Bangkok. On the outside wall of the brothel called Rape the Bitch are posters promoting sexual tourism around the world, pictures of girls and boys in the sexual slavery business, customers coming into brothels.
Other Aspect:
Video Stream of all the pornographic websites on two large screens.

ALTERNATIVES:
Alternatives like Amsterdam were the sex trade is regulated.
Workers owned brothels and cooperatives.

Dinner Party at the World Economic Forum:
Installation and Performance Project:
This is a table setting for fifty place settings of the 50 largest corporations. On the table are beautiful servings of the world’s most precious resources: water, air, oil, natural gas, gold, medicine, education/ books, etc. The candelabras are made from machine guns. The chairs are oil barrels, toxic waste barrels, chemicals etc that fuel the first world economy. Dinner is served by men and women wearing rags, and they are white gloved (of course). The plates are gold and silver.
Surrounding the dinner table is a heavy velvet rope and barbed wire. Armed security, Blackwater, is posted every few meters. You can only come in if you are on the list of the VVVIP, are ultra wealthy white, one of the 1/10 of 1% who rule the world, or you’re a servant.
Music is baroque – Mozart – a bit of night music.

Some 15 meters away or more depending on the space is the 3rd World Village.

3rd World Village
You are invited to join the people for rice and beans and a glass of water from an open well. Music is a reggae steel drum. People are gathered at tables talking and playing. People on the outside are weaving, making pottery, tending babies, forging tools.

Project
It is designed as a teaching and learning project. The project will be created by students with a focus on international Human Rights/ International Development guided by the artist. As students are assembling the project they are learning of the inequities between First and Third World Countries. They are also learning about the positive elements of Third World cultures – community, affiliation, strong sense of family, less resource dependent, and more efficiently use materials. For example, the United States has about 5% of the world’s population but uses about 25% of the resources.